


Wherein Captain Pike is a woman and Jim is OK with that

by kayliemalinza



Series: Rambleverse [26]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Academy Years (Rambleverse Timeline), F/M, Gen, Genderswap, Kayliemalinza's Rambleverse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-06
Updated: 2010-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-22 23:18:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/615494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayliemalinza/pseuds/kayliemalinza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(but beware, I am tricksy.) Bonus appearance by Memory!Winona.</p><p>Excerpt:</p><p>One day, Jim walks into Captain Pike's office and Captain Pike is a woman.... She's sitting in the chair at a slight lean the way Pike always does, resting one elbow on the armrest at the same angle and tapping the computer screen with the same finely-shaped hand. Same greying hair, same wrinkles around the eyes, and, when Jim says "Good afternoon, Captain Pike. You're looking a little different today" she looks up at him with the same expression of vague humor and disbelief.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wherein Captain Pike is a woman and Jim is OK with that

One day, Jim walks into Captain Pike's office and Captain Pike is a woman. He wonders momentarily if it's a dream—Luke isn't at the front desk, which is odd for reality but not odd if Jim's subconscious needs him out of the way—but then Jim realizes that it's past 1300 on a Saturday and Luke has gone home.

No, this is completely real, and that's definitely Captain Pike. She's sitting in the chair at a slight lean the way Pike always does, resting one elbow on the armrest at the same angle and tapping the computer screen with the same finely-shaped hand. Same greying hair, same wrinkles around the eyes, and, when Jim says "Good afternoon, Captain Pike. You're looking a little different today," she looks up at him with the same expression of vague humor and disbelief. Her face is rounder and her nose is shaped a bit differently, but that's to be expected considering the whole now-a-woman thing. Her eyes look brown but that's probably just a trick of the light.

Captain Pike considers Jim for a long moment, then rests her chin on her hand. "Yes, well, I've been feeling ill at ease with my body lately," she says. Her voice is higher-pitched, of course, but it's the same deadpan tone Pike uses when he (now she) thinks Jim is being ridiculous.

"You seem to have gotten over it," Jim says encouragingly, and indeed, Pike looks very comfortable with her judiciously-sized breasts filling out her regulation black t-shirt. They're small but she carries them nicely, Jim notices. There's something about the cant of the shoulders that not all women have the hang of. It's amazing that Pike has mastered that in just a few days at the most (Jim last saw him on Tuesday) but Pike is impressive that way.

Pike nods, eyes flicking to the side as if she's feeling unsure (which is understandable, considering the circumstances.) "I went over to the clinic for some hormone injections," she says. "It's temporary. Just for a few weeks, to see if I like it."

"That's awesome," Jim says. "I mean, that you got it done so quickly and everything." He tilts his head to the side. "Hey, is your hair longer?" It is; there's the end of a braid tucked against her neck.

Pike blinks, just once, and says very calmly: "There's injections for that, too."

"I like it," says Jim. "I bet it'd frame your face nicely if you let it down."

Pike opens her mouth, eyebrows drawing together like she's about to rebuke Jim for something (Jim is very familiar with that particular facial expression) but Jim heads that off at the pass by sitting on the desktop and leaning carefully toward her.

"Listen," he says in a low, comforting tone. "If you need any help getting, you know, _acquainted_ with your new bodily attributes, Captain, just let me know." He gives her his most sincere smile. "I'm here for you."

Pike narrows her eyes. "You're Jim Kirk, aren't you?"

"Yeah, I—" Jim's tone turns hard and suspicious. "Wait, if you were Captain Pike you would already know that." He edges off the desk, ready to call Security and notify them that Captain Pike has been possessed by a gender-bending alien.

Then someone in the doorway clears their throat and Jim whirls around, suddenly face-to-face with a second Captain Pike who is glaring at him (and, incidentally, is male.)

"Captain Pike!" Jim says. "I thought—I thought she was you!" he says, gesturing at the desk.

"You know, he did," says the female Pike, not at all embarrassed at being caught out impersonating a Starfleet officer with added breasts. "He really did. Chris, please tell me he's not one of your recruits."

"He picked me up in a bar," Jim says out of habit, even though he doesn't smirk like he normally would because it's a pretty insulting implication that he's not the most awesome recruit ever.

Female Pike looks between the two of them, takes a second look that sweeps down Jim's body, then shrugs as if the idea is reasonable.

 _Oh yeah, I'm that hot,_ thinks Jim, and relaxes slightly. He is not A-OK with this doppelganger yet, but clearly she has some taste. Then again, she is a Pike, so good taste is to be expected.

It helps that male Pike isn't threatened by the situation. He doesn't even bother to protest the innuendo, and walks over to the desk with an easy gait.

Female Pike tilts a knowing smile up at him. "Do you purposefully recruit gullible young things so you can mess with them for four years?" she asks. The smile looks as enticing on her face as it does when male Pike wears it, simultaneously sharp and adoring. Jim realizes that these Pikes must like each other because from what Jim has seen, no Pike of any flavor would throw a smile like that around without due cause. He doesn't _think_ Pike is the sort to masturbate-via-clone, but Jim is perfectly willing to be wrong about that. Clearly, Pike has hidden depths (Exhibit A: his vagina.)

"Cadet Kirk has some difficulty with the concept of Occam's Razor, I'll give you that," says male Pike, "but he's not necessarily gullible. Spontaneous gender switching has been known to happen. They didn't have roast beef," he adds, handing her a plastic container from the cafeteria.

"Are you serious?" says female Pike.

"I told you they wouldn't have it," male Pike says. "I got you chicken."

"No, I mean—" Female Pike scoots over so male Pike can squeeze into the chair next to her and get at the computer.

Seated next to each other, Jim can see a multitude of small differences: female Pike's eyes are definitely brown, her ears whorl more tightly, and her skin is several shades darker. There is a splash of nut-colored freckles across her nose.

After angling herself so male Pike's elbow doesn't jab into her ribs, female Pike pops open the cafeteria container and inspects the contents. "I was talking about the 'spontaneous gender switching,'" she says. "You're making that up."

Jim waits for male Pike to answer—he wants to hear more of their identical accents bumping into each other—but male Pike is frowning at the computer screen as if it will notice and adjust its behavior accordingly (it will not. The computer is not nearly as adept at reading Pike as Jim is, yet Jim gets in trouble more often. Just another thing in Jim's life that is Not Fair.)

"It's an established condition," Jim points out. "People usually pick it up when they're on deep space missions. Starfleet's done research on it and everything."

"I see," says female Pike. She smiles sweetly and Jim's belly, just for a second, pretends that it is a worm or a slippery eel. It gets _squirmy_. "Is all of this research conveniently classified?"

"Um, I guess it is, I've never seen it...." Jim says. Female Pike looks smug (and Jim's belly does that eel thing again) so Jim blurts out, "But it's totally a real thing."

" _Totally,_ " murmurs male Pike, and gets smacked on the knee for it.

"Be nice," female Pike says, and Jim wonders if she is the product of a transporter accident that pulled Pike's anima from his subconscious and gave it a physical form.

"Can't make me," male Pike says. Jim considers the possibility that instead the transporter split Pike into his good and bad qualities, but male Pike's retort sounds automatic more than evil so Jim discards that notion for the moment.

"People can switch genders overnight though," Jim points out a little sulkily. It's nice to look at male Pike and female Pike, kind of like they're a buffet, but neither Pike is paying attention to him at the moment and that's disappointing. "It happened to my mom a couple of times."

Female Pike snaps her gaze back to him. "You're actually claiming it happens more than once to the same person."

"Yeah, apparently it's kind of like herpes," says Jim. "She still wakes up as a guy every couple of years, especially if she's stressed out."

"You must have had a difficult childhood," female Pike says gravely.

Male Pike glances at Jim as if to make sure that didn't hit too close to home. And maybe it did, a little, because the first time his mom switched it basically ruined Jim's eighth birthday. He said that she wasn't any good to hug anymore (and he still thinks that's true; women have small waists that indicate "wrap arms around here" and breasts are good pillows, especially when you're eight years old and just the right height.) That hurt her feelings—though Jim didn't quite realize that until years later—and they were lost around each other all day because if they weren't touching they didn't know how to talk.

But the next day, glaring at the heat mirage on the road in front of their house, she realized that she was now allowed to take her shirt off in public and let out a whoop of glee. She pulled Jim out of the house and they spent the afternoon running around playing cowboys and aliens, then playing aliens and aliens, then staging ambushes on Sam, Frank, and some unsuspecting cows just for the hell of it. They got sunburnt and the war paint lasted for weeks, pale undamaged skin in streaks and swirls against pink.

So it worked out just fine, Jim thinks, and brings out a smile to go with his shrug.

"Just for the record," says female Pike, "I still don't believe you."

"I have pictures," Jim offers, already digging his data viewer out of his pocket.

Female Pike drops the plate of chicken onto the desk and holds out her hand imperiously. "Let me see," she says.

Male Pike speaks up. "Also for the record," he says, "this is my sister."

"He would have guessed that," female Pike says.

Male Pike, better versed in the wild frontiers of Jim's imagination, just smiles and shakes his head.


End file.
